[Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon

[Neil Rieck]

On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-5, Roy Omond wrote:
> On 03/02/2023 14:01, Arne Vajhøj wrote: 
> > On 2/3/2023 8:48 AM, Neil Rieck wrote: 
> >> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a 
> >> spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon 
> >> Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in 
> >> was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage. I guess Chuck 
> >> Lorre and staff didn't know this was a mini (or perhaps they did but 
> >> just liked the sound of Sheldon say "I need a mainframe") 
> > 
> > Ah memories. 
> > 
> > End of 80's I worked on a 6000-420. We could have 110 interactive 
> > users on that system.
> Memories indeed. The 6000-4n0 was the lower-end system to support 
> vector processors (the other one was, of course, the VAX 9000). 
> 
> Managed both of these in the early 1990s in Heidelberg at the 
> European Molecular Biology Laboratory. 
> 
> P.s. I have no idea who "Sheldon Cooper" is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper

VAX-6000 was the Chevy of minicomputers in the 1990s.

IIRC, Vector processing was only available if you purchased the optional vector processing board (I saw one once at DEC in Bedford Mass.)
https://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/vax/60vaapg1.pdf

Neil